Grandstand theme tune

Is this the greatest theme tune ever? And have you ever heard the full version of it?

I bet many don’t know about the guitar break in the middle!

I reckon you could probably tell how old someone is by what pictures they associate the boing with. For me, it is a snooker ball going down a pocket — or that goalkeeper’s handstand save. Sadly I haven’t been able to find either of these on YouTube.

Here are a few of the title sequences from over the years.

Grandstand really ought to still be on TV for the theme tune alone. If you ever wondered why it is no longer on TV, here is the answer. It was killed forever by a weedy remix. They even removed the boing!

The terrible music is bad enough. But what is incredible is that almost everyone in the video is doing anything apart from watching Grandstand. They are in the gym, drinking coffee, playing pool, and even doing the shopping. But they are not on the couch watching five hours of sport (apart from the young family at the end, but that is totally implausible).

Needless to say, the remix didn’t last.

It was a rocky path to recovery. This one from 2004 is bad in the opposite way. There is too much happening, but the classic montage style is gone. Worst of all, the theme tune is being spoken over!

Here is the beginning of the final episode of Grandstand, from 2007.

3 comments

Jack D Stephen

For us real oldies who can remember the black and white days that tune is an interloper and the previous tune is the one we associate with Grandstand. It too had a montage style but also a TV camera with four different sized lenses sticking out of the front turning round to point at the viewer and the legend “Today’s sport as it happens and all the football and racing results.”

By the way, you can probably blame Grandstand’s demise on Murdoch and his ilk. A lot of sport became too expensive for the BBC because of him.

I think the BBC could easily show loads of sport for not that much money if it was interested. The real reason is that there are so many more channels and other distractions that viewers would disappear. (John McCririck has noted before that Channel 4 can pull in many more viewers by showing an old black and white film than showing horse racing.)

People who are really interested in watching a niche sport (which most of them are) can easily catch it on a dedicated sports channel. So the BBC reverts to showing a handful of really high-profile sporting events (which are expensive but will retain viewers), and other programming that will drive away fewer people.

Philip

I thought the remix was pretty great, I’d sort of seat-dance along to it when it came on. The normal version is just too old-fashioned and I just felt it was a bad decision to go back to the old one.

The reason Grandstand no longer airs is because it isn’t needed. The BBC don’t have enough sport to have a whole show dedicated to it, and besides, sport became rather vague. If the schedule just said “Grandstand” that could range anything from football to boxing, or tennis to horse racing. Using titles like “Football Focus”, “Score”, “Wimbledon”, etc makes you more willing to tune in as you know what they are showing.